Tag: 1978

Director: Robert Enders
Stars: Glenda Jackson, Mona Washbourne, Alec McCowen
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: UK

This biographical film has Glenda Jackson portraying a British poet with emotional problems.

Director: Ishu Patel
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: Canada

A psychedelic new-age short about what a spiritual human being might find after death.

Director: Derek Jarman
Stars: Jenny Runacre, Nell Campbell, Toyah Willcox
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: UK

Queen Elisabeth I travels 400 years into the future to witness the appalling revelation of a dystopian London overrun by corruption and a vicious gang of punk guerrilla girls led by the new Monarch of Punk.

Director: Claude Chabrol
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Stéphane Audran, Jean Carmet
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: France | Canada

In an interwar France struggling with profound social and political change, 18-year-old Violette Noziere rebels against the constraints of her claustrophobic, working-class (and possibly incestuous) family, with troubling consequences.

Director: Krzysztof Zanussi
Stars: Jan Nowicki, Maja Komorowska, Zofia Kucówna
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland

A strange arrogant tourist arrives at the Morskie Oko mountain shelter. Next morning, in spite of danger, he climbs alone and the search for him begins.

Director: Éric Rohmer
Stars: Fabrice Luchini, André Dussollier, Solange Boulanger
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: France | Italy | West Germany

The exploits of Sir Perceval, a legendary exemplar of knightly chivalry and one of the champions of King Arthur’s Round Table.

Director: Michel Deville
Stars: François Marthouret, Claude Marcault, Philippe Rouleau
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: France | West Germany

An unnamed French intelligence service spies on and analyzes a French diplomat code name ’51’ to identify a method to control him.

Director: Brian De Palma
Stars: Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes, Carrie Snodgress
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
Country: USA

A former CIA agent uses the talents of a young psychic to help retrieve his telekinetic son from terrorists, who want to use his mental powers for evil.

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Stars: Isabel Mestres, Fernando Hilbeck, Agustín Almodóvar
Genre: Short
Country: Spain

An early short film from the director.

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Stars: Dirk Bogarde, Andréa Ferréol, Klaus Löwitsch
Genre: Drama, History
Country: West Germany | France

In early-1930s Berlin, an elegant Russian émigré and eccentric chocolatier convinces himself that he has seen his doppelgänger, and hatches a murderous plan to trade his existence for an entirely new one. Will he get over the deep despair?

Director: Ted Bafaloukos
Stars: Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace, Richard ‘Dirty Harry’ Hall, Monica Craig
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: Jamaica

Horsemouth sets himself up in business selling records but when gangsters steal his bike things start to turn nasty. As tensions build, Horsemouth and friends plot to end the gangsters reign of terror and restore justice to the people of Kingston.

Director: Yoshitarô Nomura
Stars: Shima Iwashita, Ken Ogata, Hiroki Iwase
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: Japan

When Sokichi stops providing his long-time lover Kikuyo enough money to pay for the care of their three young children, Kikuyo leaves the children with Sokichi – and his very surprised and angry wife Oume disappears.

Director: Sergiu Nicolaescu
Stars: Gheorghe Dinica, Sergiu Nicolaescu, Jean Constantin
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Romania

After Iron Guard member Paraipan discovers that commissioner Moldovan had staged his own death, he kidnaps Moldovan’s son in order to draw him out. Tensions build up resulting in a final epic confrontation.

Director: Peter Medak
Stars: Graham Chapman, David Jason, Diana Quick
Genre: Comedy
Country: UK

Arthur Harris is a happily married man who returns from his job to discover that his wife, Fiona, is leaving him. Devastated he gets really drunk and tries to commit suicide. After a few setbacks and while he is trying to electrocute himself with a lamp, the door bell rings. An odd man in a leather coat asks if there are any odd jobs that he can perform. Arthur hires the man to kill him. The next day his wife returns, but the man he hired is still trying to kill him.

Director: Paul Schrader
Stars: Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: USA

When three workers try to steal from the local union, they discover the corruption of the union instead and decide to blackmail them.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental film by Stan Brakhage which captures various footage of trees, birds, and the burial of one bird.

Director: Oldrich Lipský
Stars: Michal Docolomanský, Rudolf Hrusínský, Milos Kopecký
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Fantasy
Country: Czechoslovakia

When the famous detective Nick Carter visits Prague, he becomes involved in strange case of a missing dog and even stranger carnivorous plant. He becomes convinced that he is standing against his greatest enemy – the Gardener, who supposedly died years ago in a swamp.

Director: Reinhard Hauff
Stars: Bruno Ganz, Angela Winkler, Hans Christian Blech
Genre: Drama
Country: West Germany

One night when seeking his estranged wife, Hoffmann goes to the youth center where she works. The police are there rounding up radicals who frequent the center – Hoffmann runs into the building and ends up being shot in the head. He awakens with brain trauma, partially paralyzed and unable to speak. The police accuse him of stabbing an officer; the radicals herald him as an innocent victim of police brutality. During his slow recovery at the hospital, Hoffmann must piece together his life and struggle to remember the events of that night.

Director: Daryl Duke
Stars: Elliott Gould, Christopher Plummer, Susannah York
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Canada

A timid bank teller anticipates a bank robbery and steals the money himself before the crook arrives. When the sadistic crook realizes he’s been fooled, he tracks down the teller and engages him in a cat-and-mouse chase for the cash.

Director: Giuliano Montaldo
Stars: Giovanni Di Benedetto, Umberto Gradi, Elisabetta Virgili
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: Italy

A man is shot dead in his seat during a matinee screening of a Giuliano Gemma Spaghetti Western, prompting the police to close off the cinema in an attempt to gather evidence.

Director: Andrzej Wajda
Stars: Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Ewa Dalkowska, Andrzej Seweryn
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland | France

A famous Polish journalist presents a problem for the powers-that-be when he displays his full political skill and knowledge on a television show featuring questions and answers on a world conference by a panel of journalists. His enemies take away his privileges when he is away. The shock of being “unwanted” parallels a deeper disappointment in his private life: his wife has an affair with a jealous young rival, and after 15 years of marriage and two daughters wants a divorce.

Director: Bob Dylan
Stars: Bob Dylan, Sara Dylan, Joan Baez
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

Bob Dylan on tour with the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975; concert footage, documentary interviews and bizarre improvised character scenes.

Director: Sam Raimi
Stars: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Mary Valenti
Genre: Horror, Short
Country: USA

While spending a weekend at a remote cabin, Bruce desecrates an Indian burial ground and becomes re-animated; making way to kill his friends.

Director: Herz Frank
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: Soviet Union

A 10 minute long journey of emotions that befall children faces. Fear, Curiosity; a Smile. They all sit in a dark theater. What they see, we don’t; we can only guess from their faces.

Director: Les Blank
Stars: Kid Thomas, Allen Toussaint, Blue Lu Barker
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA

A look at the spirit of New Orleans.

Director: Jules Dassin
Stars: Melina Mercouri, Ellen Burstyn, Andréas Voutsinas
Genre: Drama
Country: Greece | Switzerland | USA

Melina Mercouri plays an actress who is attempting a comeback with a staging of the Greek tragedy “Medea” (about a woman who kills her children) in her native Greece. As a publicity stunt, she arranges a meeting with an American woman (Ellen Burstyn) who is serving a prison term for killing her own children. Features Mercouri performing “Medea” in the original, intercut with Burstyn narrating her crime.

Director: Nagisa Ôshima
Stars: Tatsuya Fuji, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Takahiro Tamura
Genre: Drama, Horror, Romance
Country: Japan | France

A married woman and her lover murder her husband and dump his body into a well. After a while, his ghost comes to haunt them while the local gossip grows stronger.

Director: Ernst Johansen, Lasse Nielsen
Stars: Anders Agensø, Peter Bjerg, Ove Sprogøe
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Denmark

Two precocious boys explore their sexuality at boarding school.

Director: John Hanson, Rob Nilsson
Stars: Robert Behling, Susan Lynch, Joe Spano
Genre: Drama, History
Country: USA

NORTHERN LIGHTS has the feel of an old black and white photograph discovered in an attic. The bitter-sweet story of young lovers caught up in an political struggle waged by farmers against the grain trade, the banks and the railroads, NORTHERN LIGHTS brings back a forgotten era of American history and evokes the austere beauty of the Northern Plains.

Director: Karel Zeman
Stars: Ludek Munzar, Jaroslav Moucka, Christian Brückner
Genre: Animation, Family, Fantasy
Country: Czechoslovakia | West Germany

A young boy becomes an apprentice for a mysterious sorcerer, working at the sorcerer’s strange and sinister mill where secretive black magic is being taught and performed at a very heavy price.

Director: Lordan Zafranovic
Stars: Frano Lasic, Milan Strljic, Tanja Poberznik
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Yugoslavia

Three young men – a Croat, an Italian, and a Jew – are the best friends in pre-WW2 Dubrovnik. When their country is occupied by Nazis and their cronies, the idyllic city becomes a place of terror and gruesome massacres. The friends must now take different sides in a global conflict.

Director: Chantal Akerman
Stars: Aurore Clément, Helmut Griem, Magali Noël
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Belgium | West Germany

Anna, a detached and diffident director, arrives in Germany to show her latest film; she checks into a hotel, invites a stranger to her bed, and abruptly tells him to leave. He asks her to a birthday lunch with his mother and daughter; she goes. Afterward, in Cologne, she meets an old friend, a Polish Jew and war refugee. In Brussels, she spends the night at a hotel with her mother, whom she rarely sees. On the train, a stranger tells his story. Last, it’s home to Paris, where her lover Daniel picks her up and they go to a hotel. Throughout, people make personal revelations to her, and Anna listens with little affect. Although it was 30 years ago, the war seems ever present.

Director: John Guillermin
Stars: Peter Ustinov, Mia Farrow, Simon MacCorkindale
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: UK

As Hercule Poirot enjoys a luxurious cruise down the Nile, a newlywed heiress is found murdered on board. Can Poirot identify the killer before the ship reaches the end of its journey?

Director: Jerry Thorpe
Stars: Gena Rowlands, Jane Alexander, Ned Beatty
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A woman fights her ex-husband for custody of her children when he sues for custody after learning that she is living in a relationship with another woman.

Director: Barbet Schroeder
Stars: Koko, Penny Patterson, Saul Kitchener
Genre: Documentary
Country: France

A documentary that follows Dr. Penny Patterson’s current scientific study of Koko, a gorilla who communicates through American Sign Language.

Director: Silvio Narizzano
Stars: Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed, Michael Murphy
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK

In the tradition of classic classroom dramas such as To Sir, with Love (1967), comes the story of dedicated teacher Conor MacMichael (Glenda Jackson), who tries to reach out and give to her pupils, juvenile delinquents, at a London alternative school.

Director: Raoul Ruiz
Stars: Jean Rougeul, Chantal Paley, Jean Raynaud
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: France

Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series’ significance.

Director: Tage Danielsson
Stars: Gösta Ekman, Hans Alfredson, Margaretha Krook
Genre: Comedy
Country: Sweden

Already in his childhood, Pablo Picasso show talent for painting and is sent to the Academy of Arts in Madrid. He becomes a painter but has to live in Paris in poverty. But one day he is discovered by a rich American millionaire and starts to earn money. But he wastes his talent by painting plates. He meets the famous people of the 1920s: Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Appolinaire, Hitler and Churchill.

Director: Radley Metzger
Stars: Honor Blackman, Michael Callan, Edward Fox
Genre: Comedy, Mystery, Horror
Country: UK

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Director: Erwin Keusch, Christian Weisenborn
Stars: Bruno S., Eva Mattes, Burkhard Driest
Genre: Documentary
Country: West Germany

Herzog is one of the most important German auteur filmmakers and certainly also one of the most passionate. For his film projects, he does not shy away from even the most extreme conditions and often leads himself and his team to the edge of physical and mental resilience.

Director: Don Letts
Stars: Soo Catwoman, Steve Strange, Robin Banks
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: UK

Documentary on the London punk-rock scene, circa ’78.

Director: David Lowell Rich
Stars: Alan Arkin, Richard Jordan, Donald Pleasence
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

Based on the true story of the attempted defection in 1970 by a Lithuanian seaman seeking political asylum in the United States. Kudirka was denied asylum and returned to the Soviets, charged with treason, and sentenced to ten years of hard labor. It was later discovered and verified that his mother had been born in Brooklyn and gone to Lithuania at a young age, which meant she was a U. S. citizen. As a result, Kudirka was declared a U. S. citizen and in 1974 released by the Soviets.

Director: Margarethe von Trotta
Stars: Tina Engel, Silvia Reize, Katharina Thalbach
Genre: Drama
Country: West Germany

Three people rob a bank to help a day care center that’s in debt. Wolf is captured, Werner identified, police suspect Christa is the third. She and Werner ask Hans, a clergyman, to launder the money and give it to the kindergarten. He refuses. They try Ingrid, Christa’s friend, who tries to help, but the school rejects the money. When tragedy strikes Werner, Hans helps Christa bolt to a collective in Portugal. Ingrid visits her; their relationship makes the collective nervous, so she returns to Germany and ceases living in hiding. The police are still looking for her and so is a witness to the robbery, Lena, a bank clerk. Lena’s interest brings Christa’s second awakening.

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alf Brustellin, Hans Peter Cloos, Alexander Kluge, Maximiliane Mainka, Edgar Reitz, Katja Rupé, Volker Schlöndorff, Peter Schubert, Bernhard Sinkel
Stars: Wolfgang Bächler, Heinz Bennent, Wolf Biermann
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Country: West Germany

Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.

Director: John Carpenter
Stars: Lauren Hutton, David Birney, Adrienne Barbeau
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA

A woman is being watched in her apartment by a stranger, who also calls and torments her. A cat-and-mouse game begins.

Director: Billy Wilder
Stars: William Holden, Marthe Keller, Hildegard Knef
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France | West Germany

Down-on-his-luck Hollywood producer Barry ‘Dutch’ Detweiler attempts to lure Fedora, a famous but reclusive film actress, out of retirement.

Director: Federico Fellini
Stars: Balduin Baas, Clara Colosimo, Elizabeth Labi
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: Italy | West Germany

An orchestra assmbles for a rehearsal in an ancient chapel under the inquisive eyes of a TV documentary crew, but an uprising breaks out.